


The Greatest Good

by Kantayra



Category: Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-01-01
Updated: 2008-01-01
Packaged: 2017-10-19 02:53:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,972
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/196060
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kantayra/pseuds/Kantayra
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>For anything that men can tell, death may be the greatest good that can happen to them...</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	The Greatest Good

**Author's Note:**

> Title (and summary) are from Plato's _Apology_. This fic is sort of an experiment to see if I could imitate Doyle's style. I'll be shocked if the story idea is original even in the slightest, but I wanted to try something short and this was the shortest plot bunny that came to me. I still can't quite decide how I did. *shrugs*

“Watson, make haste! The game is afoot!”

So rooted into my psyche was this particular circumstance upon awakening that I was half out of bed and reaching for my waistcoat before the peculiarity of this specific occasion finally struck me.

“Hurry, man!” I could make out Holmes’ strong, aquiline profile in the dim light of pre-dawn that was just beginning to cast my bedroom drapes aglow. It was an hour well known to all men of the medical profession, that last tendril of nightfall when the individual’s grasp on life is at its weakest and patients not destined to see another morn inevitably breathe their last. “We have no time for your usual dawdling!” One slender, elegant hand reached out to rather cruelly pull away the sheets that covered me, allowing the morning chill to worm its way into my limbs.

“I say, Holmes!” I protested, quite caught up in the thrill of another adventure once more. “Some day, you will be the death of me.”

In the growing light, I could just make out the mercurial quirk of his lips before my dear friend once more schooled his features toward the cool indifference he chose to maintain. He reached for the drapes and drew them back with a dramatic snap as I dressed for whatever our morning outing was to be. It was a rare case, indeed, when Holmes was so hot in pursuit that he offered me nothing but his turned back as I made myself respectable.

I was struck once again by the niggling doubt that there was something amiss, for I could remember no case that would inspire such urgency. Nor could I, for that matter, remember any case at all. I must have sat there for a moment or two, puzzling over the matter, for Holmes turned from the window abruptly, clucked at my half-robed state, and all but flung my trousers at me.

“Come, now!” he chided.

I quickly made reparations, glancing up only once and briefly to see that, while my companion’s back was to me once more, his eyes reflected clearly in the lightening window pane. I fancied that for a moment I caught a twinkle in their steely depths, an extra spark of alertness that only showed itself when I had moved him to hopeless, amused affection.

I fastened my cravat with due speed and reached for my hat and service revolver. “Where to, old friend?” said I, doubts cast aside and once more eager for the hunt.

“Perhaps the greatest adventure we shall ever share together,” retorted he, with an enigmatic gleam in his eyes, “and, I fear, the last.”

He was gone then, out the door and down the stairs, and I was left to chase after his long strides, still taken aback by those perplexing and vaguely ominous words. I had long had concern for Holmes’ health, for he was not a man well acclimated to the lassitude of old age. As I followed after him, however, I realized that I must be in error. The man I accompanied doggedly down to the docks was young, fresh and spry and bounding with that effusive energy that so characterized him when he was upon the trail of worthy prey.

The site of many a past adventure blurred past us, forming glimpses of well-known memories amidst what seemed an impenetrable fog.

“Do try to keep up, good Doctor,” he teased me with an arch curl to his lips.

I broke into a run after him, and once I had, I could not fathom why I had never run with him like this before. It seemed as though there were something I was forgetting, but the thought was an elusive wisp, and I let it escape me.

Holmes drew to a rapid halt at the third slip from the end, hidden within the shadows behind several cartons of shipping freight. As if our minds were one, as was so often the case when life and limb were threatened, I stopped at his elbow, and we waited for our moment. Rather unnecessarily, I thought, Holmes’ fingers came up to press against my lips in a warning for silence. Under other circumstances, I should have chided him after the fact that I was hardly inexperienced in these matters, but the thrill of pursuit as well as another sort of thrill at the point of contact between us allowed me a more charitable view of his actions.

We waited then, as the light of dawn grew ever brighter, until soon it was so bright that those strange doubts I had felt earlier came creeping back. This sun was not the sun of a chill spring morn, but the harsher sun I had known during my sojourns in the south, that of the equatorial regions where noon is a most formidable mistress who beats down upon all she surveys.

“Holmes…” I said with some consternation.

“Hush.” His fingers returned to my lips, and the heat between us was nearly enough to distract me from my thoughts once more.

When I looked into his eyes, however, I saw that he too knew that something was not quite right. “Holmes?” I repeated.

As if a fog had been lifted from my eyes, I suddenly realized all that was wrong. It was as though a lifetime of Holmes’ lessons had finally sunk in, and now I did not only see, but also observed, as Holmes had encouraged me to do so often.

When last I had seen Holmes, he was an old man, ill and at the end of his days. So was I, indeed, and even had I been young, I had not yet met Holmes until after I had been wounded in Afghanistan; never had I known him when I was as fit as I was now. Moreover, we two had long separated ways, and 221B Baker Street, whence we had just come, had not been our home in decades. I felt as if recent memory had been very far away, but now it was coming back to me, and most important of all…

“Watson!” Holmes clutched at my shoulders, as he shimmered like a vision before me.

“Sherlock Holmes,” I remembered once more, “died last Thursday.”

A genuine sadness leeched into those too-familiar eyes. “Yes,” he breathed, only inches away, “I did.”

“You are not Holmes,” I insisted, despite the shocking perfection of the simulacrum. I could see it now as the spirit it was, the dim vision of the docks and adventure superimposed upon my bedroom in Paddington where I had taken ill upon news of my most beloved friend’s death.

“But I am, my dearest,” the vision before me whispered with fondness beyond what Holmes and I had ever shared, except in my wildest dreams. “You cannot imagine that I would leave you behind.”

“This is only a dream,” I insisted, “an illusion cast upon me by my grief.”

He let out a bark of laughter, and his grip on my shoulders tightened as though I were sliding through his immaterial fingers. “The one time I ask you to use that romantic imagination of yours, and you cling to reason. Oh, my dear fellow, how I have missed you!”

“This is a fine time for veiled insults,” I huffed. The Holmes before me was certainly as infuriating as the original article and, as he predicted, fantastic, romantic notions did come to me then.

“You should only love me half so much were I to become less insufferable,” said Holmes, an almost coy sparkle in his eye.

“That is certainly true.” Under dozens of similar circumstances over our long lives together I had never been so bold, but in this vision the words could do me no harm, and it was something of a relief to at last admit to the softest of the sentiments I felt for this remarkable man before me.

As I resigned myself to the vision of Holmes, he grew opaque once more. The ghostly image of my bedroom faded around us, and the docks and that shockingly white light again filled my vision.

“You would not leave me without hearing the resolution to this final mystery,” he teased, as playful as I had ever seen him.

“Carry on, by all means,” retorted I, quite cheered by this visitation after a week’s aggrieved restlessness.

I sat beside him, hip to hip along the wharf, and we watched the sun grow so bright that all else dimmed in comparison but for the warmth of my companion beside me.

“As a man of medicine, you must know that your time is near,” he began, rational as ever.

“I had noticed the signs,” I agreed. “I am an old, sick man.” I did not feel it, though. I felt fresh and excited by the world as only a youth can be, when limitless possibilities lay in the future.

“And what of that indomitable, stubborn will of yours?” he pressed. “How long are you to stave off death?”

“I do not feel the need to hold onto the mortal coil much longer. I am loved, contented, with all I shall ever need in life accomplished.”

“Ha!” Holmes exclaimed in triumph. “Then come with me this morning, and we shall cross side by side. Is that not our last adventure, the pinnacle of all that we have shared together?”

His hand brushed mine, and there was reassurance in that gesture, although I knew not who was offering consolation to whom. I realized then that there was fear in my friend’s eyes, a horrible sort of uncertainly so alien to his usual confidence that I had almost not recognized it. How impossible it must be, indeed, for the most logical man I had ever known to take this ultimate plunge of faith!

“You offer me death, Holmes. Is that fitting repayment for the lifetime I have given you?” I found that I could not help but tease him about the rather amusing situation he had gotten us into this time. How fitting it was that he should tempt me so with the secrets of death as he had lured me on many a merry chase in life.

“I hope to offer you eternity at my side. Is there anything more you should desire?” he inquired in response, as arrogant as ever.

I smiled, for his words from earlier held true: I would not have my Holmes any other way but as he is and always shall be.

“Ah!” Holmes realized. “But, of course. I forget myself. How short-sighted of me!” He leaned in then, and our lips brushed for the very first time, the sweetest and purest of kisses borne from a love that mere men will never find words to describe.

I felt a moment of consternation when fear of propriety still held sway over me, but the realization seeped slowly into my bones that the rules of society meant nothing now. Here, in death, we would finally be free to share all that we desired and more. This was to be our last adventure, but heaven, for me, could never be anything more than the endless continuation of the adventures and companionship we had shared in life.

The smile I met upon our parting was as mischievous as any I had ever seen grace my friend’s lips. “I would follow you to the ends of the earth and beyond, no matter the circumstance,” I assured him fervently.

“Never did I doubt it, my Watson.” His hand reached out, and our fingers intertwined, joined together as the light turned all-encompassing, enclosing us in its heavenly embrace.

“‘Once more unto the breech,’ eh, old fellow?”

“Once more and for eternity,” he agreed.

And we stepped forward into the light and beyond, together in this as in all else.


End file.
